The Earth Liberation Front ( ELF ) , is the collective name for anonymous and autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use “economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment”. The intellectual underpinnings rationalizing such actions is known as Rewilding.

The ELF was founded in Brighton in the United Kingdom in 1992 and spread to the rest of Europe by 1994. It is now an international movement with attacks reported in 17 countries and is widely regarded as the Animal Liberation Front’s younger sister, because of the relationship and cooperation between the two movements. Using the same leaderless resistance model, as well as similar guidelines to the ALF, sympathizers say that it is an eco-defense group dedicated to taking the profit motive out of environmental destruction by causing economic damage to businesses through the use of direct action.

The ELF was classified as the top domestic terror threat in the United States by the FBI in March 2001, and are categorised as “eco-terrorists”. The ELF’s guidelines require that individuals or groups acting on its behalf “take all necessary precautions against harming any animal — human and nonhuman.